nightsinger

02 - uncharted

SEVENTY YEARS AGO, the sea gave Jameson a signet ring. It was made of pure gold, strong and well crafted with a pearl pressed into the flat metal. But before the sea gave her blessing, Jameson met a human girl. A child—nothing past the age of ten, her cheeks flushed and eyes bright as she stumbled upon a spear embedded in the side of his tail. The men who'd hunted him down were long gone by now but his bite marks remained gouged into their faces. He hoped that the wounds would weep.

She had gasped, small legs kicking up sand as she stood a few feet away on the shore, her nightdress dipping into the water. The sun was almost setting as it melted into the horizon. Jameson hissed in pain and writhed on the sandy banks, the raw instinct to survive ripping sounds of agony from his mouth, muffled by how the waves crashed into the rocks. To feel this helpless was uncommon for Jameson, to feel this unhinged from life. He supposed he was more undone by the fear coursing through his veins rather than the human staring at him from a few paces away.

The child was plump with hair the color of dried seaweed, fingers gripping into her leg. Jameson's nose crinkled with distaste, the stench of human wafting into his nose and making him retch. Whether it was the girl herself or the blue blood pouring out of him, he wasn't too certain. All Jameson knew was the consuming sensation of pain and the need to reach the water. He couldn't give a damn about whether or not she screamed—

"Are you hurt?" Her voice sounded like bells, made of tin and silvery as it ran down the junction of his neck. Jameson began to claw his way towards the shore, but it was ten meters too far and he was growing exponentially weaker, his tail growing stiff without the sea. His gills flared. Even though Jameson could technically breathe above land, he was so accustomed to the water that he felt like he was running out of oxygen, chest heaving and shoulders shaking as he inched forward like a newly hatched turtle.

The girl ran over to him and knelt down. It was then that he noticed the tears in her dress, the smear of gunpowder on the edge of the cloth. Jameson closed his eyes and gritted his teeth; he willed the sting of pain away and the roiling nausea that accompanied it. Her hands hovered around the wooden rod piercing his body, like she wanted to pull it out but knew otherwise.

Jameson went on the defense.

"Child," he snarled, feeling the sand collapse between his fingers as he used whatever strength he had left to shout. The acidic-like taste of human fear filled his nose. "Run away."

Jameson didn't kill children. He still had some part of his humanity left to abide by that one rule.

Instead, the girl came closer, wide-eyed and glistening with curiosity, the sweet stench of power making him turn his head to the side. He wanted to retch. The sea was too far, too out of reach for the water to heal him. He had lived for too many years to count. Maybe Jameson's infinite time had finally reached its end—and how ironic, he thought, that it started and ended with humanity.

"Are you bleeding?" She nibbled her bottom lip, worrying it between gap-filled teeth.

He glared. The pain knocked the wind out of him so much that his words were a wheeze. "Do you disobey so easily?"

She knelt next to his head, dark hair falling into her eyes and her white socks littered with clumps of seaweed. He wondered why she hadn't questioned his tail. "Why is your blood blue?"

The pain intensified, but Jameson was too paralyzed and weak to move. Giving up on saving himself and draining his energy even further, he fixed his gaze on the calmness of the waves breaking on the sand and the faint glow of moonlight. He began to feel dizzy. "You ask useless questions, human girl."

She frowned and pointed at his hands, the veins glowing. "I don't want you to die," she whispered, dark eyes watering. "I don't know why they wanted to hurt you so badly, but it's wrong."